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Bleep Bloop to offer mind-opening set at Nickel Beer Night

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Bleep Bloop
Deanna Rilling

If the walls are shaking at Beauty Bar on February 7, it’s thanks to the bass-heavy beats of Bleep Bloop. Making his first ever trip to Las Vegas to headline the venue's long-running Nickel F*cking Beer night, the California native who now calls Portland, Oregon, home lets us in on what we can anticipate during his performance, plus details on his new mixtape.

What's in store for those checking you out for the first time? A lot of heavy bass, and I’m going to use a lot of different kinds of rhythmic structures, and a lot of them will be unconventional. I play a lot of rap music as well, because I love rap, so I’ll mix it up, from things that are more accessible to things people haven’t heard as much of, and have a nice combo of both of those.

What your live setup like? I use Ableton Live, so it’s essentially a DJ set, but it’s probably 85 percent my own music. I have a little more control that you would normally in a DJ set, because you can set up a lot of loops and you can do a lot of different edits in Ableton to get songs ready, so most of the songs that I play are some sort of variation of the original song. Ableton makes it really easy to do that.

For those who at Beauty Bar for you and not just their nickel-beer addiction, what do you want them to listen for? Obviously the people that come out for the music are my ideal audience, and we can really connect, hopefully. I just want them to come out and have a really open mind to anything that might happen. I might play a Top 40 track, or I might play a weird synth experiment that doesn’t have drums for a minute. All different kinds of stuff. I just want people to know that it’s all thought, out and it’s cohesive and I have a plan for an experience.

Looking back, was signing to DJ Shadow’s Liquid Amber label your first break? How did you team up with him? Yeah, that was probably, I guess my first break—I haven’t really broken it open fully. But my first big exposure was with Shadow. I was at a festival in Northern California, just a little bass music festival on his All Basses Covered tour, and he played a lot of stuff off a label that I was on, Saturate. So I went into the set going, “Oh, I guess there’s a possibility he could play my songs or a song by someone I know,” then he played a remix that someone did for me that came out on Saturate. I went up and talked to him after the set, and he knew about the tiny little town that I’m from in Northern California, and knew about this place to go buy records there because he’s DJ Shadow. So he’s like, “Have you ever bought records at this antique store on this road?” And I’m like, “Yeah!” He was like, “Oh, I love that place,” and we just connected from there.

What new material will you be releasing this year? A lot. On February 1 hopefully I’m going to release my next mixtape; it’s called The PV500 Mixtape. It’s a mix, not individual tracks, and it’ll be 32 minutes long and all originals, remixes and collaborations. And all of them are unreleased—you’ve only ever heard them if you’ve seen me or one of my friends play live, because we’re the only people that have them. That’s a 22-song long mix. Then I’m releasing music off of that for the next year. I’m going to have another EP on Liquid Amber. Later in the year I’m going to do my first EP on Wakaan, which is Liquid Stranger’s label. I just went on a tour with Liquid Stranger and became very good friends with him. His dedication to the music is just as high as anyone I’ve ever met in music, so that’s the kind of thing I want to work with, and I’m going to work with him later.

Will you post the mixtape to your SoundCloud page? It’ll be the top thing on my SoundCloud.

Bleep Bloop With Grom Zuks, Byra Tanks, Lion Eyes B2B Plain James. February 7, 9 p.m., $10. Beauty Bar, 702-598-3757.

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